It is a great hour in any man's life when he is obliged to stand up alone and state his case or defend his cause. What an hour that was in Paul's history when before the Roman officials "no man stood with him," but, dependent as he was on sympathy and fellowship, he stood alone! It is when a man is absolutely left alone, in danger or disgrace, that the deepest test of his character is reached. That is the reason why the night-time, which seems to say to us "You are alone with God," has its impressiveness, and why the death hour has a similar impressiveness. Jeremiah felt his loneliness. There was nothing of the stoic in him. He could not school himself to be brazen-hearted. He was so human, so like the great majority of people, that every now and then some cry of weariness would escape his lips. "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me, a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth. I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me." Sometimes his outbursts of mental agony make us feel that the man has almost lost his bravery. "Cursed be the day wherein I was born! Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?" But glad as he would have been to escape the responsibility of rebuking people, and glad as he would have been to hold the affection and regard of his companions, he never for a moment kept back the truth, nor for a moment did he distrust God's blessing on his life. "All my familiars watched for my halting, saying, Peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him." "But the Lord is with me," he declared, and so declaring he was immovable before his adversaries. There came a third experience into his life, which carried his difficulties one degree higher. It was the experience of _disdain_. He knew full well that the wicked course of the nation was inevitably leading to destruction. Unless the evil of the people should cease the powers of Babylon would come and would destroy Judah. He was debarred an interview with the king. He therefore wrote his message on a roll, put it in the hands of a messenger, Baruch, and in due time that roll was carried into the king's presence by Baruch and read to the king. The king was sitting in his winter house. The weather was cold. A fire was burning before him in a brazier. As the king heard the words of Jeremiah that called him and the people to penitence, his anger was aroused. He seized the roll ere three or four of the columns had been read, cut it up with his penknife, and cast the whole roll into the fire to be utterly consumed therein. He did this in the presence of his court. He did it with a disdain and contempt that made every man present feel that Jeremiah and Jeremiah's words were to be despised.